Step 3: Practical Advice

Of course one needs some practical hints for the beginning. It is well known that humans are great in betraying themselves. So if you set up some rules to follow, this might help you in your battle. Remember, if you are not a hundred percent honest, you are just lying to yourself. God knows your heart. It is better to commit crime and than come to Jesus with honest regrets than committing crime and trying to hide it. The darkness is the strength of the sin and the evil. If no one talks about it, it gains more and more power about your thoughts and fears.

(The Organization CovenantEyes provides very helpful material to help you quitting porn. A german translation of this material is provided here: The Desert-Challenge.

The english version might follow soon. If you are interested, write us a message.)

Self-Reflexion
If you start with something that is appealing to you at first, but turnes out to be bad you would normally stop it. But sometimes this doesn’t seem to be easy. The question brought up to you now is not if you want to stop (otherwise you would not have signed that contract, right?), but why you started. The better part of your journey you’ll have to find out what drove you or why you drove into this fatal situation. Try questioning yourself about your wishes and things that appealed to you in a way that you started to watch porn. When you find out about it, try to develop strategies to work on these problems. Often porn is symptomatic for what makes us worry deep down in our hearts (e.g. stress, broken relationships…). When you can locate that reason or your desire, you can ask god working with you on that part of your soul.

Accountability partner
The first thing you should think about is to tell somebody you think is trustworthy about your problems. This is the first step from getting the sin into the light. You need somebody to talk about it. Somebody you can pray with. Somebody who can encourage you. Somebody who will check your goals.
Obviously this is a difficult step because you are revealing some intimate details of your life. Choose this person wisely, but do it. If you do not know who you could talk to, please write us a message.

Flee from temptationIt is not necessary to be tempted all the time. You can block specific sites on your computer (also sites like youtube, instagramm or pinterest, which have a lot of tempting content). Remove tempting things like posters etc. from your room. Avoid contact with people who are tempting you with their actions or their appearance. Think about what is more important: To look at a nice body or living a life after gods will (In marriage of course there is nothing wrong about enjoying sexuality as long as it is consistent with the bible). Also try to actively avoid times where you know it will be hard to resist. E.g. if you are alone in the evening or bored you can hang out with friends or simply go for a walk in the park. To support this idea see the following verse:

Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body.

1 Corinthians 6:18 ESV

Positive thinkingYour mind will more likely try to help you with your goals if you set positive thoughts as goals. For example:
“I don’t want to watch porn.” turns into “I will live this day to honor god.”

PenaltyWe do not recommend this approach, but people have told us it worked for them. While some people need a more positive approach, others might need clear lines to follow. If you are one of those, you can set up penalties if you fail. Some people donate a certain amount of money to organizations against human trafficking or the church when they fail. Remember that Jesus is full of love and does not want to see you hurting yourself. Another problem is that salvation gets somehow cheap in a way you can buy it by talking penalty. E.g. you might think at some point, I just donate 10$ and watch porn now. This is very dangerous! So please double check before you choose this way.